Oh, surely someone will try. “The universe was fine-tuned to be just suitable enough for life to support it, but not suitable enough for life to arise, so that God knew that after people evolved, they would figure out that life had obviously been designed.”
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If Mr. Duke is able to heal blind people just by healing, why hasn’t he opened a clinic and heal people every day? He has this power, and only heals one person?
This is the part I don’t get about claims of miraculous healing. If people have these powers, why aren’t they using them?
What do people do when they gain sight because of modern medical procedures? Did the blind girl who was healed by the astronaut follow him around for the rest of his life?
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Going back to Bertrand Russell (who is one of my favorite philsophers)
But science habitually assumes, at least as a working hypothesis, that general rules which have exceptions can be replaced by general rules which have no exceptions…
All arguments which, on the basis of experience, argue as to the future or the unexperienced parts of the past or present, assume the inductive principle; hence we can never use experience to prove the inductive principle without begging the question. Thus we must either accept the inductive principle on the ground of its intrinsic evidence, or forgo all justification of our expectations about the future. If the principle is unsound, we have no reason to expect the sun to rise to-morrow,
…
The existence and justification of such beliefs – for the inductive principle, as we shall see, is not the only example – raises some of the most difficult and most debated problems of philosophy.
Russell uses the word “BELIEFS”, which can be said to be FAITH in unprovable (be it formally or practically) assumptions.
Extending Russell’s concerns about induction to events in the past, rather than just the future, we are faced with whether we can accept (to use Russell’s words) “general rules which have exceptions” or “general rules with no exceptions”.
Now, setting aside for the moment deeper theological questions about ID and/or God, if we hypothesize general laws like the presently accepted laws of physics and chemistry, do we insist the way they operate presently (based on our puny sample size of reality) is necessarily how they operated in the past and/or whether we can classify them as “general rules which have exceptions”.
In stochastic processes, there is more of a continuum where we have events in the normal range (some amount of standard deviations from the mean) and extreme outliers (beyond some multiple standard deviations from the mean). This raises a question as to what point does is a deviation from the norm sufficiently beyond expectation that we will invoke it as an exception to physical law – aka a miracle.
Koonin suggested multiple universes to solve the origin of life. Stenger as appealed to multiple universes to solve fine tuning. But practically speaking this is a faith appeal to the unknown, and not only are they extrapolating accepted mechanisms of physics, but appealing to speculative mechanisms as well that may be in conflict with accepted mechanisms (aka Inflation fields).
One can’t formally observe the other universes actually exist. Some have said here in this discussion it’s based on inference. Well, other sets of physicists postulate God by inference as well!
In any case, at a basal level not directly talking about ID, is the question of whether the origin of life and supposed evolution of life is within reasonable expectation of the accepted laws of physics and chemistry. Koonin appealing to multiple universes and Crick appealing to alien civilizations is testament that the emergence of life is considered by some to be an exceptional event far from expectation.
How exceptional does an event have to be before we consider it a miracle requiring a violation of accepted laws of physics and chemistry. This is formally separate (albeit related) to the question if miracles require God to explain them.
What is well within science is to postulate certain events, like the origin of life, are several deviations beyond expectation of accepted laws of physics and chemistry (as in textbook physics and chemistry). At what point do we postulate these accepted laws are violated, and whether it make sense to postulate “general rules which have exceptions”. It’s a separate, but related question whether these exceptions are evidence that support a postulate of Intelligent Design and/or Miracles of God.
I’ve said that the postulate of ID and/or God is not formally provable.
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We can use experiments to determine if the natural laws were different in the past. One of the easiest ways to do this is to point telescopes into the sky and directly observe the past. We can also look at rocks that came from the past to see the results of those laws in the past, such as uranium radiohaloes or natural nuclear reactors like those at Oklo.
If probabilities for the stochastic process are spread over a Guassian curve, then the tails of that curve extend out to infinity. If we map lottery results the winners will be at one extreme edge of the probability, and yet no one thinks it is a miracle when they win.
That would require a complete knowledge of all possible pathways for the origin of life, all of the planets in the universe where these pathways could occur, and how long those trials on those planets were ongoing. From what I have seen, science doesn’t know any of these variables.
You are making the case that Russell really didn’t get science. And, for that matter, I’ll mention that @stcordova doesn’t really get science.
“Belief” is a term of art within philosophy. It is a mistake to confuse it with faith.
It all has to do with one’s a priori assumptions. If you assume that a Deity exists that can perform miraculous deeds, you will be much sooner inclined to conclude ‘miracle’ than if you do not make that assumption.
You may have perfectly good reasons for your a priori belief, but I suggest that those are personal, subjective reasons. Science needs more - it needs shared (and shareable) empirical evidence of something before it can incorporate it into its explanatory corpus. That is both its strength and its weakness.
I was referring to ACCEPTED laws of physics and chemistry, not some physics or chemistry that is based on omniscient knowledge. Our excepted laws are based on the induction, Russell was talking about.
An accepted law/principle in both my cellular biology and biochemistry texts is Virchow’s principle:
“Where a cell arises, there must be a previous cell, just as animals can only arise from animals and plants from plants.” – Alberts, Bruce. Essential Cell Biology (Fifth Edition) (p. 609). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
– Similar citation in McKee and McKee Biochemistry: Molecular Basis of Life*
This would suggest to me that the origin of life is consistent with “general rules which have exceptions”.
I am referring to those same laws as well.
If you want to know the probability of something occurring then you have to know all of the parameters. That’s how it works. If you want to know the probability of known laws of chemistry and physics producing life then you need to know all of the outcomes that produce life and how many reactions have taken place. That’s what’s required. It’s Probability 101.
Newton’s laws were accepted for hundreds of years until they were superseded by Einstein’s theories of relativity.
The problem with law-like behavior, such as laws of physics which are mostly 2nd order differential equations, is they can’t, as a matter of principle explain improbable machines. A law of gravity, a law of electromagnetism, etc. doesn’t make a cell phone a 747 as a highly probable construct.
That was the subject of Polyanyi’s insights which ID people had leveraged, but which presently have been forgotten.
Engineers use the laws of physics to understand how to make machines, but the machine itself can’t be said to be a highly probable construct because of the laws of physics.
We can have 500 fair coins heads. It is possible because of physical law, but physical law also makes it highly improbable. Objects which IDists call designed are objects that are possible but also improbable according to physical law.
Such objects are machines, that’s why IDists were enthusiastic Bruce Alberts called the cell a machine!
No, they aren’t.
The laws of physics produce improbable results every nanosecond. For example, if you have a mole of U-238 the probability any single atom decaying over the next 10 seconds is extremely unlikely, and yet they do decay.
No one is saying that they do.
The probability of any specific U-238 atom decaying in the next 10 seconds is highly improbable, and yet it happens with no problems.
And yet we have not seen any probability calculations, so it is nothing more than opinion and unfounded incredulity.
I’ve posted a few here, one by a physical organic chemist.
In any case, thanks for your comment.
Before, I forget, HAPPY DARWIN DAY! 
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Scientific laws are not expected to make anything. You are misunderstanding science.
If so, by way of extension, scientific laws aren’t expected (by themselves) to make life.
A lottery ticket isn’t expected to be a winner, and yet people win the lottery all of the time.
Lottery statistics don’t apply to the origin of life.
Why not? Because you say so?
Because its a lottery with over 1000 balls instead of 5.
Based on what evidence? Or did you just pull this number out of thin air?
It’s a über conservative number based on evidence. Not going any further with this but your lottery analogy needs to be retired 